Method and Apparatus for Extracting Plant Oils Using Ethanol Water

Abstract

The invention provides a method and apparatus for continuous extraction of plant oils from plant tissue using an advantageous azeotrope of ethanol and water and employing the differing solubility of plant oils in ethanol and water to drive formation of a non-toxic oil tincture.

Description

FIELD OF INVENTION[0001]Plant oil is extracted from numerous commercially significant plants including rapeseed, soy, sunflower, and olive among many others. The cannabis plant is also an oil bearing plant of economic significance. Cannabis has been legalized in 23 states for medical purposes and in 3 states for recreational purposes. Smoking the cannabis flower is the most common method of consuming the drug. An increasingly prevalent alternative to smoking cannabis is consuming cannabis extracts containing concentrated cannabinoids (CBNs). CBNs can be consumed in the form of edibles, sublingual drops, as body lotions, and by vapor inhalation.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Cannabis is an annual herb that is generally thought to include two species, sativa and indica (Hillig et al. 2004). Only female plants give rise to the CBN rich flowers and CBN content is highly variable among strains (van Bakel et al. 2011). Cannabis has a diploid genome approximately 820 Mb in size with a ch...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides a method for extracting CBNs from plant tissue that can be used on small to large commercial scales. The method complies with cGMP manufacturing standards and is safe from flammability hazards. It also allows for low temperature extraction, reducing contamination from ballast and resulting in more intact plant oils. The method is rapid and efficient and can be used for both small and large batches of plant tissue.

Problems solved by technology

However, smoking as a method of drug administration suffers from the inherent dangers of smoking.

Oral administration, an increasingly popular alternative due to higher quality food products, results in a slow, lipid-dependent absorption across the stomach lining into blood.

Intravenous injection or infusion of CBNs is less practical because they are insoluble in water.

All methods in the prior art suffer from several problems including the fact that they are or can be quite dangerous, they are inefficient batch processes yielding only a single batch per run, and they all isolate unwanted materials along with the oil that must be removed in order to produce pure plant oil.

Unwanted ballast can be removed from the extract by an additional step referred to as “winterization”: essentially cooling the extract to a temperature at which most remaining wax and lipid components precipitate out, typically −20° C. Although alcohol extracted tinctures contain less ballast than other methods they are still complex mixtures of plant constituents.

Aside from being batch processes, and the risk of fire with using flammable alcohol, another limitation on traditional ethanol extraction is that ethanol is denaturing to some organic compounds.

Aside from the high proportion of ballast this method collects, the main drawback to non-polar solvent extraction is the risk of fire.

In addition, they have no odor and are difficult to detect.

In the absence of adequate environment controls such as exhaust vents, and anti-static electricity measures the process is highly flammable and has often proven extremely dangerous.

The primary drawback of super critical CO2 extraction is that it is quite dangerous.

The use of such pressures in any laboratory or industrial apparatus presents a considerable risk of explosion resulting from structural failures due to the forces involved.

The process is also dangerous because CO2 is odorless and can fill a room and asphyxiate personnel in a short period of time.

Another drawback is that it extracts a high percentage of ballast consisting of fats, waxes, carbohydrates, proteins and sugars.

The presence of these substances makes the extract hygroscopic and therefore difficult to reduce to a powder and a poor starting material for pharmaceutical preparations.

Finally CO2 extraction is inefficient.

It is a batch process, limiting throughput, and generates a large amount of carbon dioxide gas as a byproduct.

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